Never the red wire
by otherhawk
Summary: This is a story about friendship, plastic explosives and alcohol. But mostly friendship.


**Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Ocean's 11**

**A/N: For InSilva. Even more than usual.**

**A/N: Acknowledgment to The Kinks. Who Basher and Rusty are apparently fans of.  
**

* * *

Later, with the benefit of hindsight, Basher had to admit that he hadn't been paying half as much attention as he should have been.

Still, he'd maintain it _wasn't _his fault. Okay, so he'd been playing around with the explosives, and the wires might have got muddled up, but Rusty hadn't exactly helped matters with the Lethal Weapon quotes. Not to mention that the whole point of the thing had been that _nothing was supposed to explode!_ He was making a device that looked like a bomb, would pass as a bomb under whatever test you cared to name, but which would never actually blow up.

Yeah.

But Rusty had been sprawled across the sofa opposite him, balancing a bowl of jello, a can of coke, the model of the interior, the plans to the rose garden, what looked like a clockwork hamster, and a half-empty pack of Doritos. Basher hadn't been able to look away. Seemed as though disaster was imminent.

And that was the moment that he'd absent-mindedly cut the red wire instead of the green wire.

Staring down at the device that suddenly and indisputably _was _a bomb, it had taken him less than a second to reach the conclusion.

The situation was absolutely irretrievable.

In short, they were fucked.

"Rus'? Run!" he croaked in a strangled voice, jumping to his feet.

Fortunately, Rusty had never been the kind of bloke who stood around and asked pointless questions like "Why?" or "What are you talking about?" or "Are you sure it's _safe?" _and by the time the explosion hit, they were running down the hall and diving for the floor, covering their heads, and hoping it would soon be over seemed the obvious thing to do.

There was an almighty roar. The floor shook. Plaster fell from the ceiling and he was choking on the dust. Somewhere, there was a distant ringing, though that might have just been him.

Didn't feel like he was hurt. Didn't feel like he was dead either.

He propped himself up on his elbow and looked over at Rusty anxiously. Oh, good. He didn't look dead either. That was a relief. Not _just _because he was pretty sure that explaining all this to Danny would be difficult.

"Sorry," he said loudly, and he couldn't hear his own voice.

Rusty blinked at him blankly and mouthed something.

"What?" he yelled back.

Grinning insanely, Rusty struggled to his feet and pointed down the corridor.

Oh. Looked like the hallway was on fire. Well, hell.

Rusty dragged him to his feet and mouthed something again, and this time Basher understood.

Run.

Right. Good idea.

* * *

Twenty minutes later and his hearing had just about returned, though the incessant ringing was still getting him down.

Mind you, he wasn't sure that was because of the explosion or because the police and fire brigade were very much in attendance. Lot of sirens.

"You think everyone got out okay?" he asked Rusty anxiously, soon as he was confident of being able to hear the answer.

"Yeah," Rusty said with absolute certainty. "I'm the only one who lives in the building."

Basher blinked.

"I like my space," Rusty said with a shrug.

Oh.

"Besides," Rusty added. "The fire seems pretty much confined to my apartment."

Yeah. It did.

They stood in silence for a while and watched Rusty's home burn.

"I am sorry, Rus'," Basher said at last, awkwardly.

Rusty turned to him and the smile was absolutely blinding. "Come on," he said. "Let's go get drunk."

* * *

Basher followed Rusty into the nearest bar. Wasn't that busy. Not even the lunchtime crowd had made an appearance yet.

"Oh, shit," he muttered suddenly.

"What?" Rusty asked, turning back.

"My wallet was in my jacket and I think it just got blown up."

Rusty shrugged uncaringly. "Mine too." He signalled the bartender.

Basher stared. "I've only got a dollar fifty in my pocket. So how – " He cut himself off quickly as the bartender appeared.

He watched as Rusty weaved some sort of magic spell, just _talking_, getting to know the guy, being as friendly and engaging as Basher could imagine.

Honestly, he'd swear _he'd _fall for the nice-guy-act. And he _knew _Rusty.

He still couldn't see how they were going to get free drinks out of it, mind you.

"So, what'll it be?" the bartender asked presently.

Rusty smiled. "Oh, I don't know. I'm so thirsty I swear I could drink four large brandies all by myself."

The bartender laughed. "Yeah, right. That, my friend, is impossible."

"Nah, I really could," Rusty insisted. "In less than five seconds. Bet you anything you like."

"I'll take that bet," the bartender said. "How much?"

"I don't like betting money," Rusty lied. "How about just a beer?"

"A beer." The bartender nodded. "You're on." He poured four large brandies, stood back, and pulled out a digital watch. "Right. Go!"

Rusty had barely lifted the first glass when the bartender triumphantly called "Time! You lose!"

"Oh, well," Rusty sighed ruefully. "Buy the man his beer, Bash'."

Bewildered, Basher handed over all the money he currently had in his pocket and, laughing, the bartender poured himself a cold one.

Then he and Rusty walked away with the four large brandies.

"Best drink these quickly," Rusty murmured, gulping the first one down. "Any minute now..."

"Hey!" the bartender yelled suddenly, and Basher was drinking from first one glass then the other like his life depended on it.

After all, he'd had a number of shocks today.

"Best try running again," he suggested as the bartender started advancing towards them.

They did.

* * *

They got thrown out of the second bar shortly after Rusty had won them their third round of beers by proving that yes, actually, you _can _tie a cigarette in a knot if you know the trick to it.

The third bar they hadn't _really _been thrown out, they'd just been asked politely to leave. And that hadn't even been Rusty's fault, he'd been getting them some change for the juke box with a battered deck of cards and a trick that Basher _still _hadn't been able to catch the twist to, despite having seen it eight times now, and Basher had been challenged to a game of darts and normally he was a very good player. Normally. However, after two brandies, three beers and a generous helping of something green, his hand-eye coordination possibly wasn't at his best. The dart had gone right into the eye of the stuffed trout hanging over the bar. Apparently the trout was popular. Who knew?

So in this, the fourth bar, they were taking it easy and taking a breather. Rusty had won their current drinks by dealing out a deck of cards and then passing the deck for someone else to flip through while he closed his eyes and recited the order the cards would fall in.

He hadn't got a single one wrong.

It was that sort of thing that made Basher wonder why the hell he played poker with Rusty on a regular basis?

"So where is Danny?" Basher asked at last. "I haven't seen him since last night."

"He had to take Tess to the mountains," Rusty said leaning back in his seat and poking at the pineapple in his drink with a straw. "She's got some kind of weekend retreat thing for work. She wanted Danny to drive her in so that she couldn't run away at the first opportunity."

He blinked. "Was that likely?" he asked.

Rusty shrugged. "Apparently there's gonna be yoga. And detoxing. No caffeine, no chocolate, no alcohol." He sounded like this was making it onto his list of personal nightmares.

"Wow," he said, shaking his head. "That's rough." He laughed to himself. "They're really getting married?"

"Uh huh." Rusty nodded wisely. "They'd better be. I bought a tux." His expression froze suddenly. "_Fuck." _

"What?" Basher asked startled.

Rusty groaned and his head banged down onto the table, his drink spilling lightly onto his hair. "The tux was in my apartment. It's gone."

"Oh." Basher wasn't sure quite what to say. This was the very first time that Rusty had actually expressed any kind of regret for the fate of his apartment. "Sorry."

"You should be," Rusty said, his voice muffled by the table. "Tess liked that tuxedo. She is not gonna be happy." There was a pause and he raised his head and looked blearily at Basher. "Let's get drunk."

"We're _already_ drunk," Basher pointed out. "Least I am."

"Oh." Rusty seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he smiled, dazzlingly. "Let's get drunker."

* * *

The fifth bar, several bets, several drinks, and they were shown the door after Rusty showed the angry man in the Grateful Dead t-shirt exactly how he could drink the shot of whisky without touching the napkin on top.

Basher was almost sure they were both going to have bruises in the morning. Not that he was feeling it now.

The sixth bar they just got tired of. There were only so many ways a man could hustle pool, though they'd both learnt a couple more today.

The seventh bar, and Rusty was unsurprisingly getting hungry. So he started making sucker bets for peanuts. Literally. Basher had to step into the gents for a moment, and when he came back, Rusty was sitting at a table, smiling contentedly behind a glass of whisky, and every surface around him was covered in bowls and bags of peanuts.

"Looks dangerous," Basher said, squinting.

"Wha'?" Rusty said, looking at him with a crooked smile.

"Peanuts," Basher explained. "They're combus...combusta...they're explosive. If you get them in large quantities. Like pistachios. They're a danger to shipping."

"Like icebergs," Rusty said, nodding understandingly.

"Nah, nah, nah." Basher shook his head frantically. "That's not right. Icebergs never catch fire. Too wet."

"Gasoline is wet," Rusty pointed out.

"Right." Basher stared at the table. "We've got peanuts and we've got ice. Let's find out."

He pulled the peanuts into a pile, found a lighter and set to work. It was more difficult than he thought. He had to think about surface area and pressure, so maybe all he needed was to force more of them into a pint glass – like that – and if he just crushed them up a little...okay. Be easier with a cross wind and a little accelerant.

"You got a lighter?" he asked. All he had was a book of matches.

Rusty passed a lighter over absently and Basher snapped it open and poured out the lighter fluid round the top of the glass. Accelerant. That ought to do it. Rusty was staring at the TV in the corner. Looked like it was showing the local news. Something about an explosion...

"Hey!" he said loudly. "Your place is on TV!"

Without looking down, he pulled the matches out of his pocket and struck the first match.

The flames shot up the wall.

* * *

"That was your place on TV," Basher said wonderingly, shortly after they'd been impolitely asked to leave the bar.

"Yeah," Rusty nodded grimly. "That's not good." He crossed the road with single minded determination and Basher struggled to keep up.

Rusty was heading for a payphone and a second later he was unscrewing the bottom and he grabbed a quarter out of the hundreds that rained out. "Gotta make a call," he explained over his shoulder to Basher.

Right. Of course.

He watched Rusty dial the number and a couple of seconds later he heard the beep of an answering machine and then Rusty was talking. "Danny? It's five past four, and I just needed to tell you that I'm not dead or arrested. I'm with Basher. 's cool. Just my apartment exploded is all."

Basher was staring when he hung up the phone. "Mate, I'm not sure how he's going to take that."

Rusty pursed his lips. "Don't want him to see it on TV. But if he gets in, he'll phone me before he sticks on the TV only he won't phone me because he'll get the message first."

Oh. He supposed that made sense. Or as much sense as anything ever did. "You know what we need?" he asked rhetorically.

"More drinks," Rusty nodded.

That was it.

* * *

The eighth and ninth bars they got thrown out of after they bet assorted patrons that they couldn't make the bar snacks explode.

"We need real drinks," Basher said decidedly. It was getting dark and the bars were getting more crowded. "Ale. You need to learn to drink like a man."

Rusty looked momentarily offended. "I could drink you under the table," he pointed out.

That was true so Basher nodded. "But I'd still look manlier while you did it," he explained.

* * *

Rusty found them a pub – a genuine, honest-to-God pub, and suddenly they were representatives from the Draught Beer Preservation Consortium and they were drinking their way through everything the pub had on tap. Somehow the story had worked, even though Rusty's accent owed a little more to Dick Van Dyke than Michael Caine.

"_Still _don't believe Danny's getting married," Basher commented staring at his pint.

"Why?" Rusty asked after a moment, pausing in the act of drawing what might just be the schematics of the Hiram Washbourne safe in the foam on his pint. Of course, it might be a deformed turtle. Could go either way.

"'s like a sit com," Basher explained. "_You _know. It's all about the 'will-they-won't-they' and wondering if you already are and then when he turns round and is suddenly with someone else?" He shrugged. "'s _weird._"

Rusty was staring at him. "Oh, now I really need another drink."

The bartender and his two friends were suddenly standing behind them menacingly. "_Who _did you say you were?"

Basher turned round slowly. What had Rusty said...something about a song. He smiled. "We are the Village Green Preservation Society," he announced confidently.

"God bless Donald Duck, Vaudeville and Variety," Rusty contributed by way of supplementary evidence.

* * *

Now it was dark and they seemed to have run out of bars in the immediate vicinity. Not that it necessarily mattered; Rusty had managed to lift a couple of bottles of beer from behind the bar while the bartender in the tenth bar tried to hit Basher with a snooker cue, and now they were sitting on the side of the pavement, drinking steadily.

"Hey," Danny said brightly, sitting down beside them. "Can I get one of those?"

Basher frowned. "Wait." He pointed an unsteady finger in Danny's face. "How did you find us? Tha's...tha's not possible."

Danny smiled. "I had him electronically tagged a long time ago."

"Oh," Basher nodded. Made sense, really. He supposed if he was Rusty's Danny, he'd probably have done the same thing. "Knew it was a soap opera."

"Right," Danny agreed. "And he's Joan Collins."

"You should be nice to me," Rusty said, gesturing wildly with his bottle of beer. "I'm homeless. And I just lost all my worldly possessions in an explosion. Including my cat."

"You don't have a cat," Danny pointed out patiently.

"He could have a cat if he wanted," Basher interrupted, sharp and defensive. He was feeling a little guilty, a little responsible and a little sloshed.

"Thanks, Bash," Rusty said with a smile. He turned to Danny. "You got my message?"

"Yeah," Danny agreed.

"Bet you're glad I'm not dead, huh," Rusty commented wisely.

"I'm _always _glad you're not dead," Danny said with a smile. He glanced at Basher. "So did you – "

" – it wasn't the red wire," Basher explained. "Definitely not the red wire."

"Right," Danny nodded blankly after a second, and really, Basher thought he'd kept it as untechnical as he could. "So, what was with the fires in the bars?"

"Peanuts are explosive," Rusty said seriously. "We've almost proved it."

"Peanuts are explosive?" Danny repeated slowly. "Huh. Who knew." He grinned suddenly. "So, who wants to get drunk?"


End file.
